Gladstone Services

Gladstone provides the following services for your fair or organization:

Onsite and Offsite Training

Virtual Training (webinar)

Third-party Consultants

Custom Report/iPad Template Building

Data Migration (converting your data from another program into ShoWorks)

Customizing ShoWorks for your fair

Enhancing ShoWorks based on your recommendations

Guest Speaking at your event

On-site Training

Gladstone provides onsite and offsite training for ShoWorks and other consulting
services at $1,750 per day (plus travel if we come to your location). More information about onsite training and consulting can be
found here.

Virtual Training (Webinar)

For those with a budget in mind, Gladstone also provides virtual training via the Internet as a "Webinar". This option allows the training to be convienently accessed at any location among many attendees in the form of 3-hour blocks (one block per day maximum, two blocks recommended but not required). The rate for this service is $200 per hour (or $600 per block). All that is needed is a web browser and high-speed Internet connection. Please contact us for more information.

Third-party Consultants

Having an install base of almost 1,000 fairs and thousands of users, we have recognized the value of a large pool of experienced individuals that are willing to assist those in need of a human interaction with their ShoWorks setup. These may range from people who travel to your fair and help setup the software, to taking the reins of the ShoWorks operations during your fair. We have begun compiling a list of these people who have expressed interest in assisting you and are currently providing this list for your benefit.

Custom Report/iPad Template Building

Custom Report Building

ShoWorks includes many preset reports as well as a custom report writer that
provides reporting needs for normal operation of most fairs. Should your
fair require special reporting or modification of existing reports, you may
choose to create or modify these reports on your own using Microsoft
Access. Instructions on how to open and modify these reports using
Microsoft Access is located at
http://fairsoftware.com/articledetail.aspx?AID=113020 . Gladstone
does not provide technical assistance on how to use Microsoft Access.

If using Microsoft Access is not an option for your fair, Gladstone will be
glad to build custom or modify preset reports for you at a charge of $200/hr. Most report work can usually be completed within an hour but
clarification on exactly what is needed helps prevent miscommunications or
guesswork on what your reporting requirements are. Revisions
or corrections will incur a $200/hr charge (billed in 30-minute increments after the first hour).

Custom iPad Template Building

While the ShoWorks iPad app is generally robust enough to handle most scenarios, there may come a time when your fair would like to have its own custom template which allows a different, unplanned arrangement of columns. In this case, Gladstone can provide a custom template for your own use. The cost is $200/hr and billed in 30-minute increments after the first hour. As with custom report building (see above), it is notable that our experience is that the majority of time and thus cost, is spent encouraging the customer to clarify their requirements. Unfortunately, rarely do we receive clear and thought-out requirements and therefore we accrue most time communicating back and forth with the customer to fill in the gaps of what they failed to provide in their original request. A tip for the customer to save costs, is to use their own time making a detailed clear request, as $200/hr will certainly add up for those not wanting to invest the work on their own.

Provide to us the following:

Provide two mock-ups. You can make these in Microsoft Word, Excel, or use an existing report from another system that you wish to replicate. One mock-up should look exactly as the report (or iPad layout) with sample data - for example "John Doe - 16". The other mock-up should show only the field names instead of the sample data, such as "Exhibitor Name - Age". Please note that you must use field names that exist in ShoWorks. For example, ShoWorks does not have a field called "Section" or "Parent Name". Another frequent mistake is to not provide the correct field name, for example, stating "Class" when one intends to show both “Class and Class Description”, or stating "Age" but not knowing that there are several fields for "Age" - these are "Age", "Calculated Age", and "Entry Age Calculated". The first two are related to the exhibitor, and the last is for the animal. Therefore, failing to provide clear, exact reference to terminology familiar to ShoWorks will add unnecessary time and therefore add cost to the work.

Provide all font styles (bold, etc), font sizes, and details on how the data in the report should be sorted and filtered

For reports only: if the user should be prompted every time the report is opened to filter for a specific division, exhibitor, club, etc.

For iPad only: which columns are editable (i.e. if you allow the user to change the value in the given column). Unless specified, all columns will be read-only.

For iPad only: for each column, provide the relative width in % to all columns. All column widths should add up to 100. For example, columns might be 5%, 25%, 40%, 10%, and 20%.

Provide a time frame in which the custom report is needed. We will attempt to meet your deadline however you should be aware that during the fair season our custom work may be delayed as May through August is our busiest time of year.

We will attempt to provide a quote within 24 hours of successfully submitting the above information and any clarifications made.

Data Migration (converting your data from another program into ShoWorks)

ShoWorks stores data in a simple Microsoft Access database. This means
that you can freely access your data with other programs, however please be
aware that doing so voids any support as we cannot be responsible for the
integrity of your data from importing and modifying the data structure
This includes importing data from a 3rd party or custom on-line entry system
other than the official ShoWorks Web. A
common scenario is when fairs have data such as exhibitors and their addresses
in another format and would like to import this data into ShoWorks. This
can usually be done with modest effort by having that data in a Microsoft Excel
spreadsheet format and then importing this into your ShoWorks data file (a
Microsoft Access database). Instructions on how to do this is located at
http://fairsoftware.com/articledetail.aspx?AID=116002 . Gladstone
does not provide technical assistance on how to use Microsoft Access or
Microsoft Excel.

If using Microsoft Excel and Access is not an option for your fair, Gladstone
will be glad to import your data for you at a charge of $150 per hour.
Most conversion work can usually be completed within a few hours depending on
the volume and how 'clean' the data is. For example, ShoWorks requires
that all exhibitor names be unique. If they are not, then we (or you)
must sort through these and determine which are duplicates and which need to be
renamed. We must also have phone numbers, birth dates, and postal
codes in the proper format (example, if some area codes are missing, we must
determine what that area code is). We can only import exhibitors, clubs,
schools, divisions and their classes and do not import premiums,
fairbooks or entries. During this process, we rely heavily on
clarifications of your data and the 'cleaner' data you provide us, the less
time for a conversion and therefore the least cost for this work. Please
allow two business days after you have delivered the file(s) for the conversion
by delivery via email or Web site access.

Customizing ShoWorks for your fair

Though we do perform custom programming on ShoWorks for your fair, we strongly
recommend against detailed programming that might entail more than a few hours
of work. This is because you will no longer be able to install future
ShoWorks updates (such as improvements, bug-fixes, etc.) without them
overwriting the changes we made to your "customized" version of ShoWorks.
Your customization work would need to be redone on any future updates, this
posing a potential reoccurring cost.

Custom programming is provided at a charge of $150 per hour and also includes
the time spent deciphering the specifications of work needed.

Enhancing ShoWorks based on your recommendations

We always welcome your suggestions on how we can improve ShoWorks for your fairs
and others. Should we determine that your suggestions will reasonably
benefit other fairs, we will (at our discretion) add your suggested features
into future updates of ShoWorks. There is no charge for adding features
(or bug fixes) that will be included in regular updates, however please
understand that we do not build and release updates to ShoWorks for minor
enhancements or fixes on a frequent or immediate basis. Instead, these
changes will be implemented into the regular update process in order to allow
for proper testing and prevent instability and maintenance issues for other
fairs. Should you require immediate action, we ask that you consider the
custom programming option as stated above.

Guest Speaking at your event

We offer a variety of workshop and session topics, ranging from technical
“how-to” subjects, to keynote addresses.Click here for an application for
this service at your event.